Conciousness: What Is It?

In response to an article in Scientific American by Koch and Greenfield (October 2007), Joop Nieland has fired off his own carefully argued definition of consciousness. It is not, he maintains, a solipsistic notion. It is part of a system of correlated interactions and awarenesses, and as humans we have, in addition to our intuitive awareness, an objectivised, feeling-free intellect. And here lies the problem. There is a fissure, a split, and the way is open for our selves to become tainted by culturally decided 'truths' and regulations. The author's broad-based scientific approach covers such issues as sleep, Alzheimer's, Big Bang theory and space-time, balanced by a keen sense of socio-political and ecological factors. Provocative as always, he believes that modern man is estranged from his psychophysical selfhood by commercial pressure and current working practices. Surely we have the right to be more than mere biochemical computers in a Langian ergopolis?